1.  Inertness necessarily belongs to all phenomena.  That which is only felt to be, and does not truly or absolutely exist, must have the character of inaction.  It must be felt as passive A phenomenon must be inert because it is a phenomenon.  We cannot argue from inertness in that which appears to us, to inertness in that which is.  Of whatsoever kind the essence of nature may be, if it be unknown, the phenomenon must be equally inert.  We have no ground, therefore, in the inertness which we feel, for affirming of nature that it is inert.  We must feel it so, by virtue of our known relation to it, as not perceiving its essence.

2.  The question, therefore, rests entirely upon its own evidence.  Since we have no reason, from the inertness of the phenomenal, for inferring the inertness of the essential, can we know whether that essential be inert or not?  We can know.  Inertness, as being absolute inaction, cannot belong to that which truly is.  Being and absolute inaction are contraries.  Inertness, therefore, must be a property by which the phenomenal differs from the essential or absolute.

3.  Again, nature does act:  it acts upon us, or we could not perceive it at all.  The true being of nature is active therefore.  That we feel it otherwise shows that we do not feel it as it is.  We must look for the source of nature’s apparent or felt inertness in man’s condition.  Never should man have thought to judge of nature without remembering his own defectiveness.

Such are the grounds upon which rests the belief, that nature is not inert.  It appears to me that there is little force in them.  To a great extent they are mere assumptions and assertions; and anything they contain in the nature of argument is easily answered.

First:  Why must every phenomenon be felt as inert?  Why must a ‘phenomenon be inert because it is a phenomenon?’ I cannot see why.  We know nothing but phenomena; that is, things as they appear to us.  Where did we get the ideas of life and activity, if not from phenomena?  Many things appear to us to have life and activity.  That is, there are phenomena which are not inert.

Secondly:  Wherefore should we conclude that the phenomenon differs essentially from the fact?  The phenomenon is the fact-as-discerned-by-us.  And granting that our defectiveness forbids our having a full and complete discernment of the fact, why should we doubt that our discernment is right so far as it goes?  It is incomparably more likely that things (not individual things, but the entire system, I mean) are what they seem, than that they are not.  Why believe that we are gratuitously and needlessly deluded?  God made the universe; he placed us in it; he gave us powers whereby to discern it.  Is it reasonable to think that he did so in a fashion so blundering or so deceitful that we can only discern it wrong?  And if nature seems inert, is not the rational conclusion that it is so?